TechyDad

Hey, we can’t let kids know what words mean!

Bans the dictionary

It’s because half of the Republicans don’t want democracy anymore. Democracy means that the other side might have power if the right’s views aren’t popular enough. That’s unacceptable to Republicans. They want a system where they are always in charge and nothing so minor as “our policies are highly unpopular” can stop them. They want a dictatorship with them in charge.

At best, maybe they’re willing to have a “democracy” where you have the choice of which Republican you want leading you. (It would sort of be as if the Republican primaries were really determining who would be President - not who would be the Republicans’ candidate for President.)

My company switched up retirement plans and they held a seminar to explain them. The person running the seminar said that we should be putting 15% of our salaries into retirement.

Nice idea, but if I put 15% of my salary into retirement, then I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills. I’m not living extravagantly or anything (buying something for $20 for my enjoyment seems like a splurge to me). Still, whenever I seem to be getting on a better financial footing, life throws me a curve ball. Need new hearing aids ($3,600). New a new dryer ($750). Might need a new car soon.

So either I need to be paid a lot more, I will be working until I’m 90, or I put away the money and go deep into debt but can retire. (Just kidding. I’m nearing 50. I likely won’t have enough to retire. Maybe when I’m 80.)

Only if the House didn’t impeach him and the Senate didn’t convict.

So Biden would also have to kill as many Congressional Republicans as possible to prevent any impeachment vote from succeeding. This “legal theory” is essentially saying “one murder might be criminally liable, but mass murder of political opponents is just fine!”

And it gets better. In the Georgia case, they are arguing that Trump can’t be tried because he was impeached for that crime and a criminal trial would be double jeopardy.

Ignore for a second that his impeachment wasn’t over the Georgia crimes. Trump’s lawyers are arguing that you need to impeach/convict before you can criminally charge, but if you impeach then you can’t criminally charge.

Their legal theories are the equivalent of “I object! It’s devastating to my case!”

Or just go one step further and have all Congressional members of the opposing party killed.

Biden would never do this and I don’t want him to, but let’s suppose that Trump’s “legal theory” is correct and Biden wakes up tomorrow thinking that he’s sick of dealing with the Republicans’ malarkey. He orders some military groups known to be loyal to him to round up every Republican member of Congress along with certain Supreme Court justices. They are all executed. Then Trump is brought in and executed as well.

Now what would happen? Would Biden be charged with mass murder? No, he’s immune to prosecution. You need to impeach and convict him first. But nobody remains who would impeach him. So he’s totally immune as he appoints left leaning Supreme Court justices and expands his “early Republican retirement program” to right leaning Federal judges.

Again, I wouldn’t want him doing this, but according to Trump this would be totally legal.

Republicans: “No! In fact, we’ll make sure that it’s legal for minors to carry weapons without any adult supervision!!!”

Also, the President has no official role in the elections process. At most, the Justice Department might investigate violations of the Voting Rights Act (what little remains), but the President wouldn’t be involved in this at all.

And instructing an armed crowd to march on Congress to stop the certification of the vote of DEFINITELY not in his official duties. So even if we accept that Presidents are immune while doing official duties (which they aren’t), then he’s still not immune.

Like in our dreams?

My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)

A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.

My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)

My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)

A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.

My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)

And that’s assuming that the rape is reported. Many rapes go unreported for various reasons. And requirements that the woman has to report the rape before she might be allowed to have an abortion are meant to force women into public shaming/threatening situations. (“How dare she accuse POPULAR COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYER of raping her! Look at what she was wearing. She was asking for it! Why was she drinking at all? The second a woman takes a drink of alcohol, she consents to have sex.”)

And people could have Southeast Asian Santas while others have black Santas and still others have white Santas. Nobody (except the racists) is saying that Santa has to be ONE ethnicity and can’t be any others. Just because one family has a black Santa doesn’t mean EVERY Santa needs to be black.

I agree that it would be stupid of Marvel to change Blade to a white guy (and that Marvel would never do it), but it would be theoretically possible given that he’s a fictional character - just like Santa Claus. Making black Santas hurts nobody. Well, except racists who see any black representation as injurious to their fragile white ego.

Just look at the “life of the mother exceptions.” There was a recent case where the fetus was all but dead and the woman’s life was in danger. She actually wanted the child, but carrying it to term and delivering it could have killed her.

Seems like an ideal life of the mother situation, right? Except the doctors said she wasn’t close enough to death. So she sued in court to get the law overturned. She won the right to have an abortion, but then the AG threatened the hospitals/doctors. Then the Texas Supreme Court ruled that she was at risk of dying, but she wasn’t CLOSE ENOUGH to death to qualify. So basically she had to be actively dying to get an abortion and even then it might not be good enough.

It’s ridiculous.

And since he runs the state propaganda/news stations, nothing would stop him from claiming that they successfully killed all the Nazis in Ukraine. “We went in and killed all the Nazis so we’re pulling all our troops out.”

Of course, they would need to give back the territories that they annexed as well as all the children that they stole. Not to mention pay reparations for all the damage that they did/suffering they caused. Again, though, Putin could spin this to his people. “We only temporarily annexed those areas to denazify them and always planned on returning them to Ukraine. Same with the kids. And since we accidentally destroyed some infrastructure in ‘helping’ Ukraine rid itself of Nazis, we’re generously helping them rebuild.”

Of course, nobody but those who buy Russian propaganda will believe this, but Putin just needs the appearance of everything going according to his plans.

A mass reading would be a cool protest tactic. Get hundreds of kids hundreds of copies of banned books. Have them sit outside a state legislature - clogging up traffic to and from the building as they read to themselves. Have extra books on hand to give out to people trying to get through, while encouraging them to just sit and read for a bit.

My 16 year old has done that. He finds a book that’s banned, takes it out of the library (either physical copy, eBook, or audiobook) and then reads it. While doing so, he keeps an eye out for why it was banned.

He noted that one book was banned because one page describes a sexual encounter. It was about 3 lines and wasn’t extremely graphic. It just got the point to the reader that an event happened and then the book moved on. But apparently any mention of sex even existing is enough for a book to get banned.

Unless, it’s the Bible, of course. Then you can have daughters sleeping with their fathers and it’s all good for kids to read!

Some judges are already demolishing standing. The Texas judge in the Mifepristone case ruled that the doctors suing to stop the drug had standing even though they weren’t hurt yet by the drug’s use. The fact that they claimed that they might be hurt at some hypothetical point in the future was standing enough.

Meanwhile, in another case, a judge ruled that citizens don’t have standing to sue over infringements to their voting rights.

If they demolish standing, why not destroy jurisdiction as well? Of course, a ruling from the Supreme Court would likely be worded in such a way that red states could get anything they wanted while blue states had no rights to request anything.

If he successfully kept states from certifying their votes, then Congress wouldn’t have been able to name a winner on January 6th. At that point, the vote would have gone to the House. In the House, each states’ Representatives vote and the winner gets that state’s vote. The candidate who wins the most states wins.

The Republicans hold the majority here and Trump would have been elected President regardless of the actual election result. So keeping the election from being certified was a last ditch effort to overturn the election results and “win” despite the fact that he lost.